Category Archives: Personal – my pathetic life

Domming with no energy

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I’m still recovering from being very very fucking sick. I had a rush of energy a few days ago, and thought I was up and over it, but the last two days have shown me I was, um, mistaken. 

I can’t walk far or do any of the work that needs doing. And I can’t focus enough to write anything that takes focus or concentration. 

But I got to thinking. Right now I couldn’t dom a Jack Russell terrier, let alone a submissive girl. I could probably deliver a spanking, if it wasn’t too strenuous, but overpowering even a submissive who wants to be overpowered is probably beyond me right now.

It’s not about physical energy. It’s mental energy. 

Partly the mental energy involves planning, thinking about what she and I want, and working out a path for getting there, taking in some interesting stops on the way. The nipple clamps? The tawse? Cuffs or rope? Start where? What’s the climax? That kind of planning.

But the real thing is the certainty a dom has to have. Not just when giving an order, but from the very beginning, so the submissive knows she can relax and drop. It’s a great mental space to be in, for the dom, because you can see it working, and because simply being a dom is hot. Simply domming. 

Domming takes a hell of a lot of energy and will. I don’t mean Will in a magic sense, exactly, but will is really important in bdsm. The dom has to gather it, hold it and use it. But right now, if I ordered a kitten to go away, I think it would ignore me. 

Whipping your way through Pompeii

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I went to Napoli a few days back. The first two days I did nothing except lie in bed and cough and shiver. Ate breakfast cereal for dinner the second day because all the shops and restaurants had closed when I woke up. Anyway, I was determined to get to Pompeii, so I stayed an extra night and headed out on the third day. 

I could probably say something thoughtful about the flagellation scene at the Villa deii Misterii, but right now I don’t have the nodes. Or the lobes. My brain hurts already: I’m not going to try to think. 

Anyway, here’s a loving couple engaged in an apparent spanking, taken from the wall of the underground baths. 

When your lover (or slave; it’s hard to tell in Roman art) complains the water’s cold…

The really fascinating image from Pompeii, that I should really write about, when I’m not so fucking sick, is this one. (This was an incredibly awkward picture to take, by the way.)

Many think the woman being whipped in the first scene is the woman dancing in joy in the second. That’s certainly my take.

For now, it’s time to have breakfast, pack my bag and head to the airport.

Dublin and pain

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I’m in Dublin. I had an idea, after my father died earlier this year, that I should go to Ireland, to see where I came from, at least genetically.

Statues commemorating the Irish Potato Fame. The starving, beside the Liffey, in Dublin

Both of my parents were of almost entirely Irish stock. Though the people who were my ancestors left Ireland during or shortly after the Famine, they continued to marry other Irish expatriots over the next several generations. Although there’s the occasional Welshman or Scot in my traceable ancestry, it’s basically all Irish men and women.

I’ve always been grateful to my ancestors for leaving. Ireland is still disfigured by the Catholic Church, essentially a corporation for the enabling and protection of child rapists, and for the torture and enslavement of women, the Magdalene Laundires episode being only one example of this.

I’d been in Dublin for about six minutes when I encountered a march of young women demonstrating for the repeal of Ireland’s stupid, cruel and life-threatening ban on abortion.

I make a lousy nationalist. If I’d been living in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, I’d always have voted to be part of the United Kingdom. Not out of nationalism: I’d don’t give a fuck what Cromwell did to the Irish three hundred-odd years ago. Or the Elizabethans before that. (Both sides seem to have forgotten the Scots invasion, and the land theft, famine and massacres under Robert the Bruce’s brother Edward, because that doesn’t fit the narrative.) 

I’d have voted to be in the UK because I didn’t want to have the cops, directed by the church, tell me what I’m allowed to buy in a bookshop. I’d have wanted to be able to buy contraception, which you could then do in the UK but not Eire. I’d want a woman to be able to get an abortion if she has an unwanted pregnancy. Fuck nationalism: I only care about human rights. 

So it was sobering to be reminded that Eire’s abortion law is still the one dictated by the Church. Rapists, torturers, murderers and their enablers, still claiming moral authority. Sooner that’s dumped into history’s Dead Joke Box the better. 

Anyway, the pain I cause is consensual, intended to help, to lead to pleasure and other kinds of growth, and never to cause harm. Ireland is full of the traces of the domination of an organisation that seeks no consent, and is entirely indifferent to the pain, suffering, harm and death it causes.

 

By the way, I’m thinking about pain because after Eroticon, and after seeing Gretel off on the place back to her native land, I went to Dublin and got a cold. My head hurts. Really hurts. My bones feel like I’ve been beaten up, apparently in my sleep, by the secret police. I need to cough all the time, and it hurts like hell to cough. I’ve got chills. God, I’d love a hot flush. 

On the other hand, I’m outside a pub on Talbot Street, drinking coke and watching pretty girls go by. So … silver linings, that’s what you have to look out for. 

Eroticon is (almost!) here! And I’m in London at last

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Sorry to regular readers. I’ve been on the road going up through northern Italy, then Paris, and I’ve just arrived in London. I’ll probably write something about that later, but it’s hard to write much while you’re in transit. 

And though I have a lovely and loved travelling companion who speaks French and Italian, also Railway, immensely better than I do, it’s still hard work.  

I’ll do what I can in the next few days. In the meantime I’m tossing up between having a beer and going to sleep.

In the meantime, here’s “Roman Decadence” by Thomas Couture, in the Musée d’Orsay. I’m going to Eroticon’s meet and greet evening tomorrow, and I’m hoping it’s something like this.

In full flight

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I’m cooling my heels in an airport transit lounge, on my way to the castle. I’ll be in my castle in 20 hours. 

Then my girl arrives in Rome the next day, so I’ll be with her (some might dispute that preposition) in about 40-odd hours. 

Wifi here is dodgy, so I’m not even going to try to post a pic, though I’m having a hilariously bad hair day.

 

Jerusalem Mortimer soon to be on sale!

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Er, not actually a real book. But it you want it, I’ll write it. For food.

I used to place stories in magazines and anthologies. I had one in Playboy, once. I’ve never actually seen it because they forgot to send me a copy. (Also, they chopped out 1,000-odd words, and I sulked.) But the money was real, generous and much appreciated.  

Then I got involved in political activism, and it became a bad idea to keep publishing. I don’t care much about political parties. I put my energy into campaigns for political and legal changes about unemployment, homelessness and domestic violence, for example. It’s what government does that matters.

But it wasn’t a good idea to have a guy who worked with the male children of women victims of family violence write stuff about tying up and spanking girls who enjoyed being “bad” and its consequences. There’s a huge difference between a pink bottom acquired willingly and joyously, and a black eye acquired in out-of-control terror.

But anyone working for Rupert Murdoch (spit) and his media empire, for example, would pretend to be confused by that difference and use it to discredit any cause I was associated with. And when I wasn’t writing about sex I was writing about a world in which everybody broke the law – especially but not only about drugs – routinely, and the cops were experienced as violent, corrupt thugs.

So I worked on what I thought was important and I shut up. I’ve achieved some social reforms, one major one and a few minor ones, and people are better off because I did that.  But I’ve served my time now. I’m back to writing and, more importantly, publishing, for money. 

This, on the other hand, is absolutely real

My big and serious book, Between the Lines: A biography of BDSM has to come out in paper form, from a mainstream publisher. That’s important, for it to get to the audience it needs to reach.

But I have other work that can emerge in e-form. So I’ve registered on Smashword. There’ll be a story available for sale in a couple of days. Look in if you feel like it. Even buy it! 

Yeah, I know. As a salesman I absolutely suck.

My Smashwords page, for what it’s worth, is here.

 

Good to be home

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I’m back from the funeral and wake. I’d like to thank everybody who sent supportive and really nice messages. I’m touched. There really is a community out there, and it’s extraordinary that an anti-social bastard like me has been welcomed in and become part of it.

I’ve been neglecting a few things while I’ve been away. This blog, for one thing.

And there are so many physical projects I’m behind with, like chainsawing down a row of trees. They provide a good visual block between the neighbours and me, on that side. But now they’re grown so high they’re occluding the solar panels. 

It’s a horrible job, because you have to stand on the stop step of a step-ladder, on very steeply sloping ground.

Has anyone seen my damn lawnmower? Turned my back for an instant, can’t find it again.

I came down a while ago, when the stepladder spilled over, releasing me and my chainsaw to fall about three metres to the ground.

Fortunately, the chainsaw cut off the instant I took my hand off the charmingly-named dead man’s switch.

I left skin on the branches as I crashed through them, but I landed on my arse, still with the chainsaw in my hand. So I said some words, and then made bigger chocks for the ladder. 

And then there’s the lawn. It turned into jungle while I was away. 

Anyway, I’m back to this blog. Things will be happening, from tomorrow. Tune in!

Wicked Wednesday: Death is not life

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I’ve spoken my eulogy. My father has been cremated. His descendants and their lovers had the wake. A very Irish wake. I’ve recovered from emotion, also alcohol poisoning. And now I’m home, and dead tired. 

I drank most of a bottle of Cointreau with a brother I used to be close to. He was twelve years older than me, and when I was a boy he was easy with people, and especially with women, in ways that I’ve never quite managed. I hero-worshipped him.

I borrowed from him and got better at talking with women. That was at least partly because of sex, though sex with women wasn’t the only reason I’ve always preferred women to men. What they say just tends to be more interesting, at least to me. 

They seem more likely to talk about what’s really going on. And to be less hidden, and less competitive. Though I suppose women compete with each other and not so much with me. 

That thing about competitive speech may be the reason I know a fair number of women who prefer the company of men to that of women. Even some lesbians. 

I still haven’t got all that good at talking to most men, partly because a hell of a lot of men talk about sports, real estate and other stuff that bores the shit out of me. No doubt it’s also partly because I don’t fancy men, so I have less incentive to be close to many of them.

Anyway, my brother and I managed to get our closeness back. That was good.

I never understood why he stopped communicating with me. It wasn’t a quarrel, and nothing dramatic happened. He just withdrew, and when I tried to reach out he’d let it fall flat.

I mostly blame myself when things get weird inter-personally, but it must have been something going on with him. He withdrew from a lot of people outside of his own family at that time. 

But we’re men. We enjoyed talking again. But we never talked about that. Anyway it’s good that’s over and we’ve started again. 

I’ve spent a while with death.

I feel a great need to follow my heart and be involved in sex. My girl is still a long way away. But the time when we will close in on each other – in an Italian castle! – is getting closer.

I want to be naked and in her arms and in her. I want to feel her arms and her cunt around me. As well as other parts of her body. I want us to melt and dissolve and merge. While still pumping and pulling and wresting for each other.

The life force may not be exactly the same thing as sex, but sex is its avatar. It’s how it shows itself to the world. 

 

Wicked Wednesday: The pale court of kingly death

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To that high Capital, where kingly Death 
       Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
       He came; and bought, with price of purest breath, 
       A grave among the eternal.—Come away! 
       Haste, while the vault of Waitemata’s day 
       Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still 
       He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay; 
       Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
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My father lies in a coffin in his homeland. I leave tomorrow to be with my brothers and sisters, and his body, at his funeral. It’s only for a few people: his children and their partners, and a few grand-children. My mother’s funeral was a bigger affair, but that was because he was alive, and he needed it. Now he needs nothing. 
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Totora live for 1,000 years. This is the oldest known totara tree. Its name is Pouakani. It has a temper, and its best not to sleep under it.

On Saturday we’ll drink the horrible sherry he drank, in his honour, and tell stories about him. And he will be cremated. In a year’s time, his children, my brothers and sisters and I, will come together again to mingle his ashes with those of the love of his life, our mother. We’ll dig a hole in the earth among the roots of a young totara tree, which will be fed by both of them and of which both of them will become a part. 

No one in my family believes in life after death, including my father. He knew he’s not going to join my mother for sherry on the balcony in heaven. But he found the symbolism of that reunion in a living, growing thing was right and comforting. 
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I’ve written about my father before. My father was a man of power, both the possessor of institutional power by holding various offices, and of personal power. He was, I’m pretty sure, not into bdsm himself, but the way in which he exercised power has been the model for a lot of what I do as a dom. 
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That is, he exercised power in a way that was kindly, mostly selfless, and that didn’t take himself, or power, entirely seriously. At the same time he could be terrifying. He used that power to keep some sort of peace in a school playing-ground, and, later, working for the UN, trying to keep the factions working together in places like Afghanistan.
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I use that skill more trivially, for the pleasure and amusement of submissive women. So long as they know it’s not real, so that it only feels as real as they want it to. Because I know some things that my father didn’t know, I’m suspicious of power, except where it is received voluntarily, and it’s at the service of sexual and other pleasure. 
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Still, he used his power as benignly as he could manage, and since he was intelligent and strong, he could manage a lot.
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With his passing I become a kaumatua. Of no hapu, but still, there it is. I’m next in line.
Note:
Because of the death in the family, this isn’t the planned Wicked Wednesday story. But Jennifer and her headmaster will be back next week.